Biodiversity

What societies eat reflects their position on the modernity trajectory. Poorer countries have health problems because of lack of food. Then as people get rich, they end up losing the health advantage of food availability. They eat processed food that is high in salt, sugar and fat, which make them obese and ill. It is only when societies get very rich that they rediscover the benefits of eating real food and value sustainability.

Madhav Gadgil and K Kasturirangan are both scientists of great repute. But both are caught up in a controversy on how the Western Ghats—the vast biological treasure trove spread over the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu—should be protected. First the Ministry of Environment and Forests asked Gadgil to submit a plan for protection of the Ghats. When this was done in mid-2011, the ministry sat on the document for months, refusing to release it even for public discussion.

Food is personal. We know that. What we often don’t realise is that food is also more than personal. It is also about culture and, most importantly, about biodiversity…

Says Sunita Narain in her preface to First Food, our most recent publication, a unique and lively celebration of food, recipes, traditions and biodiversity. We bring you a web preview of the book today, to mark the International Day for Biodiversity, and a package of articles, opinions and stories.

The traditional agricultural system of Koraput (Odisha) has been recognized by the FAO as a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Site (GIAHS) at the recently concluded 99th Science Congress. This recognition is for outstanding contribution to promoting food security, biodiversity, indigenous knowledge and cultural diversity for sustainable and equitable development. Living Farms is a non profit working in the Koraput region of Odisha with the tribal communities practicing the traditional form of agriculture.

Top News is a compilation of important environmental news topics selected by environmental experts from the Asia-Pacific region as well as by international organisations and research institutes from twenty-one countries in the region.

A website helps people observe and understand nature while gathering scientific data

by Sumana Narayanan

If there is a neem or jamun tree in your backyard, check it regularly and note down when they flower and fruit. You may soon realise you are collecting data for scientific research.

The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), a research body in Bengaluru, plans to rope in people for creating an online database on the lifecycle of various plant species across the country and on the influence of climate change on them.

The steady disappearance of the world’s biodiversity had been recorded earlier, but the problem reached scary heights in the late 1980s. The loss during this decade was described by experts as “the most catastrophic” in the last 65 million years! It was also becoming quite obvious by then, that these resources were the fodder for a booming market...